gore which effectively closed the book on the 2000 presidential election by ending the florida recount and mr. boies is with me here. good to have you. >> good to be here. this time i have ted olson who is representing me. >> that's right. you guys are a team here which is striking. pick up on this conversation. what is it that you need the court to decide in lay language? >> sure. at the very beginning of this case, we said we needed to prove three things. we needed to prove first that marriage is a fundamental right. we needed to do that and the defendants even agreed with that. the supreme court has ruled that 14 times in the last 100 years. second, we needed to prove that depriving gay and lesbian citizens of the right to marry seriously harmed them and seriously harmed the children that they were raising. and we proved that, too, not only through our witnesses but through the defense witnesses. >> can i interrupt on that point? i think it's significant. which is, in effect, are you saying you want gays and lesbians to be treated as a protected class like african-americans? in othe